The same could be said for most wedge issues. In the US, gun rights and and abortion also become a focal point of US politics despite the existence of issues that deal with millions of preventable deaths (automobile safety, obesity epidemic, poverty), issues that deal with hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples and killed civilians (Afghanistan and Iraq war, war mongering over Syria, Libya, Iran, etc), and climate change, which our brightness minds continue to tell us could lead to not insubstantial percentages of all forms of life on our planet going extinct and billions or trillions of dollars of economic cost.

But we just focus on emotional trigger point issues. See focus on and mass protests because of police brutality (hundreds of deaths a year) compared to zero widespread action on the injustice of the prison system (hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, literal slavery and imprisonment in cages over antiquated unequally applied drug laws).